Robert Siegel, Host: Director Stanley Kubrick is in Ireland making a new
movie...and in New York City this week, Kubrick's first feature
film, Fear and Desire is getting its first commercial release in 40 years.
The director who went on to create Dr. Strangelove and 2001: A Space
Odyssey was 24 years old when he made Fear and Desire. Apparently, he's a
little embarrassed by his fledgling effort and he tried to block Film Forum
from showing it. From New York, David D'Arcy has more.

David D'Arcy, Reporter:Fear and Desire is a war drama about four soldiers
trapped in a forest behind enemy lines. They wear what look like World War
II German uniforms, but we don't know where or who they are or whom they're
fighting. The only weapon they have among them is a pistol and that belongs
to a smug, wise-cracking lieutenant.

[Dialog from the film:] You know, there's
nothing so refreshing as an afternoon out of doors in enemy territory. It's
really too bad that the sun doesn't burn us green instead of brown.
Camouflage. Well if you see some strange faces across the way, just wave to
them casually and try to look as native as possible.

The film's script was written by the young Howard Sackler, who later won a
Pulitzer Prize for his play, The Great White Hope.Fear and Desire is filled
with earnest references to The Tempest, Shakespeare' s late play about
noblemen marooned on an enchanted island. Sackler asked a 20-year old
student named Paul Mazursky to try out for the role of an innocent soldier
named Sidney. Mazursky, who went on the direct such films as An Unmarried
Woman and Moscow on the Hudson remembers auditioning for Kubrick.

Paul Mazursky, Director-Actor: I went up into this apartment and there was
this fellow, he seemed to be a couple years older than me. He had a wife and
I think a Doberman Pinscher and suddenly I was reading and I read and I read
and I read the whole script. And he said to me at the end, he was very
intense, dark hair, round eyes, and I was not nervous so much as impressed
by a fellow pretty much my own age with his own apartment and a wife, my
gosh. He said OK you got the part. We leave Monday, unscheduled flight from
Newark Airport. We pay $100 a week, room and board. And I said well, I have
to go to the dean to get permission....

D'Arcy: Mazursky took the role. He flew with Kubrick, the other actors and a
small crew to the San Gabriel Mountains in California. Kubrick operated the
camera and directed. The cast and crew slept in bungalows and ate
sandwiches. The movie cost $9,000 to shoot.

Fear and Desire opened in 1953 in Rockefeller Center but since then, even
film scholars haven't been able to see it. The George Eastman House in
Rochester recently restored a print and Bruce Goldstein of New York's Film
Forum, jumped at the chance to show the young director's debut.

Bruce Goldstein, Film Forum: It is a very pretentious movie, the way the
shots are composed. It looks like he was studying some of the early Russian
master works and in that respect there are a few scenes that are very
flashy and expressionistic, but there is a definite talent there.
There's no doubt about it. It's a very accomplished movie, especially for a
24-year old.

D'Arcy: But Stanley Kubrick hates the film and to keep it off the screen he
threatened Film Forum with copyright violations, even though Fear and Desire
is in the public domain. Through a Warner Brothers' publicist, Kubrick
called his first feature `a bumbling amateur film exercise'.

Goldstein: Kubrick had Warner Brothers send a letter out to all the
press in town saying that the picture was boring and pretentious and of
course, that only drew more attention to it. So it now, now it really is a
must see, because now it's the picture Kubrick wants to suppress. So that
makes it even sexier as a box office attraction. So I think he's increased
our attendance four-fold.

D'Arcy: In fact, Kubrick's admirers braved sub-freezing weather on Friday to
come to the film's opening.

D'Arcy: Among the many fans who came on Friday was James Lee of Shanghai,
China, where he says none of Kubrick's film were shown when he was growing
up.

James Lee: "Right now he is a major director in America, right. So I want to
know what's going in 1950's."
D'Arcy: Maybe that's just what Kubrick doesn't want the public to see,
scenes such as this one in which Sidney, played by Mazursky, loses his mind
after killing a girl he and the other soldiers have captured.

[Dialog from the film (Mazursky):] It wasn't my fault. The magician did it. Honest.
Prospero the magician. First we're a bird and then we're an island.
Before I was a general and now I'm a fish, hurrah for the magician.
Ahhhhhhhhh....

It's been 40 years since Paul Mazursky has seen Fear and Desire and more
than 25 years since he's spoken to Kubrick.

Mazursky: I don't remember it as studying acting lessons so much as a
fellow who knew what he wanted it to look like and my memory is that some of
the things in it looked quite wonderful. But still, even to this day, I have
memories of certain images in it which I' m sure later we saw in Paths of
Glory and other films of his. That's where he learned how to make a movie.

D'Arcy: The same audiences may also recognize the temperament that sustained
Stanley Kubrick's career according to Film Forum's Bruce Goldstein.

Goldstein: The thing he should be proud of, instead of denouncing the
film, is that he did it his way from day one. He was an independent and he
has remained an independent. He's really made his films on his own terms
since the very beginning.

D'Arcy:Fear and Desire, Stanley Kubrick's first film, plays through
tomorrow at Film Forum in New York. No other bookings are planned but the
George Eastman House in Rochester expects other theaters to show the movie
over Kubrick's objections. For National Public Radio, I'm David D'Arcy in
New York.